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Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘Fight Club’

Steve Bannon at a Trump campaign event in New Hampshire in 2016.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

I met Steve Bannon for the first time in September 2013 at the so-called Breitbart Embassy on Capitol Hill in Washington.

I had spent the better part of the previous seven years working for Republican members of Congress before making the leap to start my own public relations firm. Like anyone starting a business, I was eager to find clients. In Breitbart I had a media platform at my disposal to attract a stable.

Before that meeting, I had never met or even heard of Steve, and so I approached it with an open mind. But as I would come to learn over the course of two years working with him closely, his character and temperament made his stunning fall over the past few days inevitable.

In that first meeting, Steve described his ambitious vision for Breitbart. He wanted to seize on the social media revolution to create a central digital destination for conservatives. His observation — entirely correct — was that the center-right media universe was fractured and underserved by the mainstream media. The Tea Party movement that swept unconventional Republicans into office in 2010 represented a turning point that upended the establishment, and Steve wanted to use Breitbart to tap into that movement.

Steve might have looked unkempt, but his energy, precision, clarity and certainty were impressive. I agreed with his overall observations about the media environment and the change in the Republican Party. So I joined the team.

I would be Breitbart’s media consultant, promoting stories written, Steve assured me, by a world-class team of reporters. If Breitbart had an exclusive interview with a policymaker, my mission was to make sure every political reporter and Capitol Hill press aide knew about it. Bannon was obsessive about wanting Breitbart scoops mentioned in the handful of daily morning email tipsheets that set the agenda for Washington, especially Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook.

In the beginning, Steve lived up to this vision. He successfully recruited new talent to join the Breitbart team, some of whom were well-known and respected Capitol Hill reporters that brought with them the kind of credibility Breitbart had been lacking.

But in June 2014, a political tsunami hit Washington that would permanently change the editorial bent of Breitbart and, I believe, realign Steve’s ambitions. The House majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, was being challenged by a conservative Republican named Dave Brat. An untested candidate, Mr. Brat was a signature project for Steve and Breitbart. They published a litany of stories supporting Mr. Brat and viciously attacking Mr. Cantor. They were the only platform willing to push the narrative that Mr. Cantor was in jeopardy. And they were right: Mr. Brat stunned the political establishment by beating Mr. Cantor. Steve regarded the defeat as a “scalp,” as he put it, for Breitbart.

He also saw the race as a harbinger for changes in the conservative movement. He spoke openly of a reckoning that would wipe out the Republican establishment in Congress. Breitbart would be at the heart of this revolt — the tip of the spear that brought down the globalist neocons and replaced them with Steve’s brand of America First, anti-immigrant nationalists.

In September 2015, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he was stepping down from his leadership post and resigning from Congress. By this point, Breitbart had become known for running a barrage of stories hyping potential coups against Mr. Boehner from more conservative members of Congress. Steve regarded Mr. Boehner’s resignation as another “scalp,” believing that Breitbart single-handedly brought down the speaker.

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From my vantage point, this marked a major shift for Breitbart. When I joined, it had wanted to be the platform that chronicled the conservative story. Now it had become an active participant in shaping the story from the inside out. Or, as Steve called it, the “fight club.”

Make no mistake: Steve did not regard Breitbart as a platform to inform people or report the news, but as his “weapons” of choice in a war against the political establishment.

Using the pages of Breitbart, Steve took on sitting senators from Kentucky, Kansas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi. His preferred candidates lost every single race. But he sent the message to the Republican establishment that he was going to be a force they could not ignore.

During this time, Steve began his search for a figurehead to build his war against the political class around. From the end of 2014 through the summer of 2015, I watched him jump from Sarah Palin to Rand Paul. From Ted Cruz to Ben Carson. Ultimately, he landed on Donald Trump.

In Mr. Trump, Steve saw someone who, like him, was shunned from the polite classes and was a true outsider. He admired Mr. Trump’s uncanny ability to command and control the media spotlight. Mr. Trump had the voice; Steve had the message. In Mr. Trump, Steve found the man to rally his audience of deplorables around.

By the fall of 2015, Breitbart had become nothing more than a propaganda vessel to advance the political interests of Steve Bannon’s chosen one. Nothing illustrated this more than when Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbed one Breitbart reporter, Michelle Fields. Steve was so invested in Mr. Trump that he was willing to sacrifice his own reporter, whom he refused to defend, to protect his personal interests.

Today, Steve finds himself a man without currency. Thanks to his arrogance and his lack of discipline, he has lost his proximity to the president, lost his billionaire benefactor Rebekah Mercer and lost his precious platform, Breitbart. Meantime, ever the dramatist, he compares himself to Thomas Cromwell.

As for Breitbart, the loss of Steve means the loss of its identity. It faces the same question it had to answer after Andrew Breitbart died in 2012: Without a charismatic personality, what is Breitbart? Meantime, its financial position is at best uncertain, thanks to an exodus of its advertisers as a result of a relentless Twitter campaign run by an entity called “Sleeping Giants.”

The fallout also creates a new reality for establishment Republicans. No longer will they have Steve and Breitbart to point to and cast blame for Donald Trump’s antics. With the alt-right officially sidelined, the G.O.P. now has full ownership of the president. Good luck with that.

Kurt Bardella (@kurtbardella) is a former spokesman for Breitbart News. A longtime Republican spokesman, he recently left the party to join the Democrats.